Author: G Balachandran
Editor(s): G Balachandran
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN/UPC (if available): 019 5659821
Description
This collection of essays by leading scholars presents major debates on the subject of India’s engagement with the world economy, and the ways in which it was transformed and deepened during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The intense questionings that this process stimulated shaped the Indian intelligentsia’s critique of British rule. It also influenced the historiography of colonialism and India’s economic polices after independence.
In this, the second volume in the Debates in Indian history and society series, two contexts to this engagement are explored-India’s subordinate colonial status, and the creation and ordering of the set of markets, institutions, relations, and ideas that constituted the world economy. Contemporary and historical analyses have tended to privilege the former. But as G Balachandran argues in his introduction, it is essential to repair the neglect of the latter context. This will allow for a better understanding of the pasts of our globalized present, as well as of the conjoined histories of the modern British empire and the world economy. Thus while some essays consider India’s position as a colonial economy, other essays shift the discussion towards a wider focus on the interweaving and mutually-reinforcing contexts of colonialism and contemporary globalization.
Along with recounting traditional debates, this volume also offers refreshing new perspectives on an important field of historical enquiry that is of great contemporary relevance. A useful reader for undergraduate and postgraduate students, this book will also interest scholars of Indian and imperial economic history, as well as informed general readers.
Contents
General Editors’ Preface
Tables and Figures
Introduction
India’s International Economy in the Nineteenth Century: A Historical Survey
The Drain of Wealth and Indian Nationalism at the Turn of the Century
Tributes and Transfers from Colonial India
The Great Depression (1973-96 and the Third World: with Special Reference to India
Agriculture in Slump: The Peasant Economy of East and North Bengal in the 1930s
Indian Monetary Vicissitudes: An Interlude
Britain and the Indian Currency Crisis, 1930-2
The Depression
Index
Notes on Contributors